I remember I got half way through the main story and then learned about the beacons.

Needless to say, having 7 million dollars disposable cash, and a shit ton of weapon and veichle upgrades led to some serious fun.

Also, it's worth noting that the Black Market dealer drops a bunch of veichles as well, such as a effing fast jet, helicopter, attack helicopter, bike, sports car e.t.c. <- makes travelling easier. Just upgrade the jet, and you're set._____OK after seeing the video now, it was disappointingly bad. Not your best one Greg.

It's worth mentioning that you can "extract" via the black market to any point on the map that you've discovered, but my problems with calling them didn't really encourage me to take advantage of that mechanic.

That's the whole point of NOT driving 2 kilometers to your destination: you can instantly fast-travel to any explored location via extraction. I don't know how buggy the beacon is on the xbox, but it worked just fine on the PC.

Also, i recommend the upgraded Silverbolt light airplane to make travelling not only fast, but hella fun.

As for repetition, i've finished the story mode and 36% of the game and i'm still not bored of blowing stuff up.

It's worth mentioning that you can "extract" via the black market to any point on the map that you've discovered, but my problems with calling them didn't really encourage me to take advantage of that mechanic.

That's the whole point of NOT driving 2 kilometers to your destination: you can instantly fast-travel to any explored location via extraction. I don't know how buggy the beacon is on the xbox, but it worked just fine on the PC.

Also, i recommend the upgraded Silverbolt light airplane to make travelling not only fast, but hella fun.

As for repetition, i've finished the story mode and 36% of the game and i'm still not bored of blowing stuff up.

That's a plane?? Dammit I thought it was a jet car.

Think the games great for free roam but it does get kinda old clearing out bases again and again and there isn't alot of mission variety

Sorry, sounds like you got a tad bitter about the whole "Argh, travel" thing, purely because you didn't bother to learn to extract. If you actually used it, you would not be experiencing your SANDBOX TRAVEL RAGE.

Judging from what reviews I've read, it seems like the best version to get is the PC if you can run it because the ability to mod it makes it a lot more fun as well as increased accuracy due to the mouse.

Sure, bad voice acting is practically a video game tradition but this is the only game that forced me to turn on subtitles and hit the mute button every time a character opened his or her mouth.

Also:

RobCoxxy:Sorry, sounds like you got a tad bitter about the whole "Argh, travel" thing, purely because you didn't bother to learn to extract. If you actually used it, you would not be experiencing your SANDBOX TRAVEL RAGE.

Yeah... no. The extraction mechanic is clumsy as all hell. Each time you use it you have to go through about six steps, including three loading screens (albeit short ones) and two cutscenes (with the aforementioned horrible voice acting). Also, you can't use it during a mission or during "heat".

The one item per call Black market thing is a PITA, but the extraction mechanic works fine & saves a lot of time so don't see why having to look at the ground to use a beacon (no different to throwing a smoke signal in mercenaries etc tbh) was so frustrating you'd rather drive everywhere :/

Audio is annoyingly buggy, game gets repetitive if played for too long. But the fact it lets you blow up a fuel depot, then leap off a cliff onto a helicopter & use that to blow more stuff up more than makes up for it when wanting something fun & dumb to do for an hour or so.

I guess I'm the only one who has absolutely no problem with the Blackmarket thing?Press down on the d-pad. Then press Y while looking at the ground. Easy.Oh, and press 'A' as soon as you hear the guy start talking, since you can just skip over those 'Hey amigo! what do you need?' cut-scenes.

I will agree that the lack of buying more then one item is a tad annoying, but if you collect what you just bought and use the black market beacon again, the little black market cut-scene is skipped over, and you jump right back into the menu. So that's not so bad.

And I can't help but think there was some serious exaggeration with the length of a death. I just played this a ton this morning, dying a bunch on those stupid plane challenges that make you fly up and around bridges, and the death sequences never seemed long to me.

Over all, the game is just about having fun. Story and voice acting take a back seat, but they are so very bad it's funny, so that makes it better. It's about jumping around, blowing everything up. And it's a blast (No pun intended). It's certainly eating up my time! And it's always fun to experiment with the grappling hook. Like when I grapple a motorcycle that's chasing me to the ground. FLIP! Awesome.

Not to insult your intelligence, but you died ten times in the first parachuting tutorial? I had no problem figuring out how to maneuver while gliding, nor did I have any trouble calling in for an extraction. maybe these "frustrating" features are only so because you didn't get the hang of them?

I do agree that having to respawn miles away in the closest stronghold was annoying as well as dumping to a menu when you die.

Complaining about traveling in Just Cause is like ranting about how you get shot at in COD6.The game is more or less all about the traveling, and what's the deal with dieing? It's trial error, not call of duty-re-spawn/checkpoint-every-5-meters.And... again... I've never had a dull moment with the game. It's easy to learn and hella fun all the time.

Sure, bad voice acting is practically a video game tradition but this is the only game that forced me to turn on subtitles and hit the mute button every time a character opened his or her mouth.

Also:

RobCoxxy:Sorry, sounds like you got a tad bitter about the whole "Argh, travel" thing, purely because you didn't bother to learn to extract. If you actually used it, you would not be experiencing your SANDBOX TRAVEL RAGE.

Yeah... no. The extraction mechanic is clumsy as all hell. Each time you use it you have to go through about six steps, including three loading screens (albeit short ones) and two cutscenes (with the aforementioned horrible voice acting). Also, you can't use it during a mission or during "heat".

True, but if you had to get to some location in a time limit, for example, simply airlifting there would suck the fun away.

Sure, bad voice acting is practically a video game tradition but this is the only game that forced me to turn on subtitles and hit the mute button every time a character opened his or her mouth.

Yeah I gotta agree with you on that one. The worst offender was the Russian/Italian/Jamacan/whatever the fuck she was, leader of the Reapers. Bolo Santooooozzeeeee.

But really, this isn't one of those games where you don't even care about the story. All you need to know is: Here's a big world to play in, now go blow shit up.

Yeah, i have only played the demo so far (ordered it and now it feels like the post man lost it...) and the first thing i though when that reapers girl started talking was "OMG where is the mute button?!)

This game is basically the Prototype argument all over again-- there are some technical issues and the story is basically a throwaway, but it's forgiveable because the game itself is such a blast to play.

Frankly, the voice acting is so hilariously bad that it's hard for me to believe that it wasn't intentional-- it goes well with the very tongue-in-cheek feel of the game itself.

Wow, this review is incredibly ingnorant for the most part. First of all, you didn´t bother to extract which removes your whining for driving to much and the rest are just nitpicks that you whine about to make them seem big, the only thing i agree on is that it gets slightly repetetive, but the amount of ways you can approach it more than makes up for that.

Overall, it isn't a horrible game. The physics are a bit wacky at times (such as the camera angle when you are parachuting in, spin around enough and you can make yourself sick), and I agree with everyone's opinion about the black market system. I think they could have placed a few of the black market dealers around the map... you know, maybe four of them scattered across the map somewhere that you could walk in to or up to and buy more than one thing at a time. The drops make some sense in the context of needing a weapon/vehicle in a pinch, but not if you are gearing up for a siege. The respawn is another unfortunate typo on this as the death scene is a bit dragged out, but I think they did that so if you were killed in the middle of an intense firefight, you get a few moments to calm down and rethink your strategy before diving back in to the fray. Then again, the 2-20 KM drive/flight/walk/carsurf back to your previous location proves often to be enough to get over the frustration of being killed. I did find some of the colonels a bit tougher than they should have been unless you were driving a tank! Short of having the rocket launcher, unless you are a trained sniper who can get repeat head shots in your sleep, you're going to have trouble with those guys. The grappling hook was a nice feature (I haven't said hook shot since Zelda 3), and it was fun tethering enemies together, to vehicles and to the ground during chases. I never did under the pinata kills though...

Really, I think this game was a finer example of what Bionic Commando SHOULD have been. While this played more like Saint's Row/Red Faction, it is clear that devs can't find a comfortable spot between sandbox and scripting just yet, but they are getting close. I'd agree with the 3 out of 5 on this. A lot of fun, but the supplied motivation and story just aren't quite up to keeping you on the path to finishing the game without screwing around on your own to have fun.

Driving? Seriously? I've been watching my friend parachute around at high-speed thanks to the parachute/hookshot combo. Also, no mention of using the grappling hook to attach objects to objects? He's been dispatching generic mooks by attaching them to canisters and explosive barrels and then attacking them instead. Or vehicles.

The extraction system is easy and quick. The only problem I've seen is the lack of explanation; however, they're quick to work out with some experimentation.

It sounds like you've hit hard by journalistic time pressure and coming off the end of PAX. Hopefully you'll have some more time to dabble and either update the review or acknowledge the greater depth of the game here in the comments, because as it stands this review is poorly-researched at best.

Greg Tito would like to apologize to all of the innocent citizens of Panau for jumping onto their cars and tossing them out.

Yeah but you don't mean it.

OT: I just recently played Saint's Row 2 for the first time. Based on what I'm reading it looks like SR2 still holds the championship belt for best sand box game.

Actually, I thought Fallout 3 took the throne but that was more of an rpg.I loved Saints Row 2 (it was the perfect thing at the time to wash the stale after-taste of gta4) and I think you got your perspective a little off.

They are very different games. Imagine if they guys who made Saints Row 2 said, "hey, we ripped off gta and made it better in the process. Let's do the same with Mercenaries." This would be the result.

It's not a perfect game but it's just fun and it gives you a hell of a lot of possibilities.

I'll be honest, I was a little iffy about it the first few times I played the demo when it came out. Then I got into it. Before long I was playing the demo almost religiously and never got bored with it. I think I could have months of fun with this game, and what's better is that the missions weren't boring, the controls are good, I LOVE the grappling hook/parachute system. Driving Cars isn't so bad, heli's and planes are decent once you get used to them, but motorcycles are HORRID to drive. Other than that, I love it.

EDIT: Though I'm not sure how Destroying countless villages' water towers in the desert could POSSIBLY help the people out...just sayin'